Evolution car body

(from 1969 to 1976)

The fact that in recent years (from 1969 to 1976) 271,000,000 vehicles have been produced in the world gives an idea of the enormous expansion of the car industry. This development has taken place in the industrially more advanced countries, which have reached densities of one car for every three of four inhabitants, with ever increasing numbers of families that possess two or more cars.
This chapter is concerned with the spread of motor cars throughout the world and it will consider all the models of which more than a million have been built.
It is well known that the first car to exceed this level of production was the Model T Ford. The career of this car has been fully discussed earlier in the book, so here it is sufficient to record that it took two years to design and reach production. It was not for another 70 years that Henry Ford’s record was beaten, when Volkswagen put the Rabbit into production from scratch in eighteen months.
When Ford introduced the T the public were told that it had undergone the most severe tests in all weather conditions (snow in winter, in the mountains during summer, and on sand and on mud). With this sort of presentation Henry Ford was ahead of his time in publicity. Today’s manufacturers still emphasize that the prototypes of a particular model have undergone the same harsh treatments before moving on to the production line.